I used my own avatar in VR and it was awesome
The why
The avatars people use to represent themselves in social virtual reality are in the center of immersive interactions happening in those digital environments. The authenticity of those virtual conversations stems directly from the people who communicate in those worlds, similarly to any other social media platform. That is why having your own personal, recognisable representation in social virtual reality is such an important aspect of bringing the interactions between people to life, making them authentic and truly social.
This is exactly the problem what we at Wolfprint are tackling. We imagine a world in which we can create authentic relationships and connections with friends, family and colleagues in VR.
The what
We run our first animation tests on our avatars this October and the next step was to bring them into an actual social VR application. We chose highfidelity.io as the platform because it already allows players to customise their avatars and import 3D models.
Here is a quick clip showing a character customised with our face scan used in High Fidelity. More on the whole process below.
It certainly feels authentic. It feels like I really have a connection with the character I am controlling. Whoever I meet in virtual reality is looking at my avatar, looking at me, because that’s how I look like in real life as well. This dramatically increases the connection I can establish with other people on a conscious and subconscious level.
As virtual reality is going to be one of the largest communications platforms, it is crucial that everyone can personally represent themselves and it felt great to join a group of people as myself while others were mostly using an avatar downloaded from the marketplace or embodying a default alien looking character. In fact most avatars we can see in VR worlds, including Facebook’s social VR platform, are generic and lack personality. It is the people who are going to make those virtual worlds become alive and they need a way to translate their identity into VR with a healthy dose of customisation if they so desire.
The how
Let’s take a quick look at how we have accomplished to bring people into social VR by building a global network of 3D scanners and a database of 3D scans.
It all starts with a precise 3D scan captured in one of our 3D scanning booths.
The 3D scan goes through an automatic processing pipeline converting the raw data into a usable game-ready 3D asset without compromising on quality.
After the scan has been automatically processed and transformed into a full head model, the whole avatar can be modified with different clothes, body types, accessories etc. In the long term, that is also one of the ways we plan to generate revenue — charging small monthly subscriptions from customers who pay to use their avatar in various gaming and VR experiences as well as providing options for customising their character with different hairstyles, clothes and so on.
At this point the avatar is ready to be imported into a VR application or game.
In order for conversations in social VR to be attractive, seamless and authentic, everyone needs an accurate representation of themselves in those digital worlds. As VR allows so much more immersion, lifelike avatars who actually look like you, your friends, family or co-workers are going to play a big role in bringing humanity into virtual reality and effectively making it less virtual.
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